26th September 2024
You are going to your office. At an intersection, you encounter a group of people, all staring at the sky. Without even thinking about it, you peer upward too, to check what is happening.
Why? Because of Social proof.
In the middle of a play, when the actor enacts a great scene, someone begins to clap and suddenly the whole theatre joins in. You do, too.
Why? Social proof.
After the play, you walk out and ask the valet to get your car. You watch how the people in front of you give a tip to the valet, even though, officially, the service is included in the ticket price, what do you do? You probably leave a tip as well.
Social proof is prominent when people are unsure of how to behave in a situation. For example, if you see a long line outside a restaurant, you might assume the food is good and decide to join the line.
In marketing, social proof is used to influence the purchase decisions of potential and returning customers. For example,
People look for online reviews & recommendations when shopping.
Social proof, sometimes roughly termed the “Herd Instinct,” dictates that individuals feel they are behaving correctly when they act the same as other people. In other words, the more people who follow a certain idea, the better or truer we deem the idea to be. And the more people who display a certain behaviour, the more appropriate this behaviour is judged by others.
This is, of course, absurd.
This behaviour exists and is seen in fashion, investment. management techniques, stock markets, hobbies, religion, and diets.
A simple experiment, carried out in the 1950s by legendary psychologist Solomon Asch, shows how peer pressure can warp common sense.
A subject was shown a line drawn on paper, and next to it three lines— numbered 1, 2, and 3—one shorter, one longer, and one the same length as the original one. He or she must indicate which of the three lines corresponds to the original one.
If the person is alone in the room, he gives correct answers because the task is really quite simple. Now five other people enter the room; they are all actors, which the subject does not know. One after another, they give wrong answers, saying “number 1,” although it’s very clear that number 3 is the correct answer.
Then it is the subject’s turn again. In one-third of cases, he will answer incorrectly to match the other people’s responses.
Why do we act like this?
Well, in the past, following others was a good survival strategy. Suppose that thousands of years ago you were with your hunter-gatherer friends, and suddenly they all bolted. What would you have done?
Would you have stayed put, scratching your head, and weighing up whether what you were looking at was a lion or something that just looked like a lion but was in fact a harmless animal that could serve as good meat?
No, you would have sprinted after your friends. Later on, when you were safe, you could have reflected on what had actually happened.
Those who acted differently —and I am sure there were some—became meat for the animals.
We are the direct heirs of those who copied the others’ behaviour. This pattern is so deeply rooted in us that we still use it today, even when it offers no survival advantage.
Comedy and talk shows make use of social proof by inserting canned laughter at strategic spots, inciting the audience to laugh along.
We are no longer in the jungle where our first reaction has to be survival. I’am reminded of English novelist W. Somerset Maugham’s wise words: “If fifty million people say something foolish, it is still foolish.”
Don’t follow the herd blindly, don’t look for social proof and stay blessed forever.